


The Girl From the Journal

by juggieheadcoopers



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Fluff, Tumblr Ask Box Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-10-25 23:16:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10774521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juggieheadcoopers/pseuds/juggieheadcoopers
Summary: Soulmate AU: Jughead Jones has been writing about a girl he has never met before, but when he leaves his journal at his favorite coffee shop one day, an unsuspecting young woman finds it without knowing that the stranger who wrote it was actually writing about her





	1. Lost and Found

_She wears her hair held high in an off-the-face-neat-and-tidy sort of way that shows the world she’s ready to concur it. Her mind drifts from one idea to the next without stopping to take a breath. And although she doesn’t know it, she impacts every single person she meets just by being exactly who she is._

24-year-old, Jughead Jones III looked up from the beat-up journal that his father had given him for his sixteenth birthday eight years ago, turning in his seat to thank the waitress for the cup of coffee she had just set on the table in front of him. He had been writing an entry a day since he had found it sitting on his bed with a big red bow tied around the front cover when he got home from school, and he hadn’t missed a day since. 

“Can I get you anything else?” the waitress, all fluttery eyelashes and puckered lips, asked in the sweetest voice she could possibly muster as she smoothed out her apron and turned to smile sweetly at him. 

“No, that’ll be all, thanks,” Jughead dismissed her without a second glance, taking a small sip of his coffee and immediately picking up his fountain pen to continue writing. 

“Well, if you need anything else, my name is Naomi,” the waitress informed him, taking a step back from the table and gesturing towards the front of the coffee shop. “I’ll be behind the counter for a while, so just let me know if-”

“Got it,” Jughead cut her off before she could finish, and Naomi sunk back behind the counter without another word. 

Jughead focused his attention back to his journal entry for the day, furrowing his brow as he waited for more words about his mystery girl to flow from pen to page like they’d always done so naturally. He had been writing about this girl for years, and although she was nameless, she had distinct features that made her almost impossible to miss if he were ever to meet her in real life. She had become somewhat of an obsession of his over the past few months, distracting him from work and relationships to the point where he was beginning to believe that this girl he created in his mind, was actually out there somewhere waiting to be found.

Just as he was about to tackle his next paragraph, his phone began buzzing frantically on the table, causing the cup of coffee to shake and shimmy all across the table in the process.

“Mr. Dawson,” Jughead answered, his voice rising an octave the way it always did whenever he spoke to his boss. “Yes, I understand that there’s a deadline and I’m - no sir, I wasn’t aware that I took you for granted - yes, sir - yes, and I’ll be there in an hour - now I’ll be there right now, I’m on my way. Okay, see you soon - in ten minutes, I’ll see you in ten minutes, goodbye!” 

Jughead clicked off his phone and scooped up his messenger bag from beside him in the booth before sliding out of his seat. Taking one last gulp of his coffee, he carelessly tossed his journal into his bag before hurrying to the front of the shop to pay his bill.

Just as he reached the counter, a woman carrying an overflowing box of what looked to be gardening tools came barreling into the coffee shop without any control of her feet or the box she held in front of her.

“Sorry, excuse me, if you’d just - oops - sorry, sir, are you okay?” With the box partly obstructing her view, the woman nearly slammed straight into an older man carrying a to-go cup, dodging him by only just a hair and knocking her elbow into the counter as a result. “Ow!”

Still in a hurry, Jughead tried to block out the woman’s incessant apologies and turned to the employee behind the counter. “Hi, I’m ready to pay, if that’s alright.” 

“Sure, just one moment,” she smiled at Jughead, but then turned to the crazed woman with the box, her eyes going wide as she took in the scene that was unfolding before her. 

“I actually don’t have a moment, I’m-” Jughead tried to protest, but the woman behind the counter was already heading over to inspect what was happening near the front door. 

“Betty, what on earth are you carrying?” 

“Hey, Polly, I’m just… Hold on a second,” the crazed woman, now known as Betty, dropped her box onto one end of the counter and quickly dusted her hands off. “Ah, that’s better.”

“Okay, start explaining,” Polly instructed, nodding to the box of gardening tools and raising a curious eyebrow. “What is all this?” 

“My third graders are learning about rocks and minerals this week,” Betty explained. “So I’ve been going around the neighborhood looking for different kinds of stones and varieties of soil to-”

“Sorry,” Jughead interrupted, pulling on his messenger bag impatiently and flapping his check in the air. “I don’t mean to be that guy, but if I don’t get back to my office in seven and a half minutes, my boss has threatened to strap a rocket to my back and send me flying to some unknown universe so if I could just-”

“Yes, sorry,” Polly hurried back over the the cash register and took Jughead’s credit card, quickly ringing him up and tearing off a piece of paper from the machine next to her and handing it to him. “Here’s your receipt, enjoy the rest of your day!”

“Thank you,” Jughead nodded at Polly and turned to head out the door, but before pushing it open to brave the cold morning air, Jughead stopped suddenly and turned back to Betty. “Good luck with the rock thing by the way. There’s some good ones by the lake just off Kingston Drive, if you’re still looking. It’s a gold mine down there trust me!”

With that, Jughead left the coffee shop, leaving Betty to turn back to Polly with a surprised smile on her face.

“Well, that was unexpectedly kind of him. Most guys in suits like that aren’t usually so friendly,” Betty pointed out, thinking back to all the guys she knew in college who were crazed, wannabe business tycoons with a bad attitude. 

“He comes in here every morning. Sometimes in the evening too if he’s trying to meet a deadline,” Polly informed her, wiping the counter down with a cloth and leaning forward on the surface with her elbows. “Yet I still have no idea what his name is.” 

“He’s a writer?” Betty guessed, trying her best to conceal the interest that had seemed to pop up in her voice. 

“Yeah, some kind of hotshot news editor by the looks of it,” Polly explained, pushing off the counter and bending down to fix an out-of-place pastry in the display case. 

“Interesting,” Betty muttered, turning back to the door and looking out the window intently. “I wonder if - uh oh.”

An object on the floor in front of the welcome mat caught Betty’s attention, and she hurried over to investigate.

“What is it?” Polly asked, her brows furrowing together as she took in the old journal that her sister was gently holding in her hands. 

“Looks like Cinder-editor left his notebook behind,” Betty concluded, holding up the journal for Polly to see. 

“Well, hurry, go track him down before he turns into a pumpkin!” Polly joked, gesturing to the door and ushering for her to leave. 

Betty knew that there was no way he would still be around, but she also knew that she had to take a chance. Pushing through the front door, Betty hurried out onto the streets, searching both ways for any sign of the journal’s owner. Spotting the same old beanie that she remembered seeing the man wearing at the end of the sidewalk one street over, Betty moved quickly to catch up to him.

“Wait!” she called out to him, but he was already joining the crowd of people in front of him and crossing the street. “Wait, you forgot you’re-” 

With all the chaos happening around her, Betty got swept up into a group of school kids heading to their bus stop and ran straight into a woman walking her poodle in the opposite direction.

“Watch where you’re going!” the woman snapped, glancing back at Betty to glare at her before heading into the apartment building behind them. 

“Ow, why does that keep happening to me?” Betty rubbed her shoulder, standing on her tiptoes to see if she could spot the beanie again, but it was nowhere to be found.

Glancing down at the journal in her hands, a thought crossed her mind that she knew was unethical, but kept popping back up to the forefront the longer she stared at its worn cover.

“Betty, don’t read it, that would be an invasion of privacy,” she muttered to herself, quickly shaking the thought from her mind and tucking the journal safely under her arm. “But then again, maybe he has his name written somewhere in the front cover. I mean, how else am I going to get this back to him if I don’t know his name?” 

Betty slowly slipped the journal back into her hands, glancing behind her shoulder in case anyone passing her on the street could tell how much of a snoop she was being.

“Oh, what the heck,” she conceded, flipping open the book to check for a name. Written in thick letters were the words: **Property of Forsythe Pendleton Jones III** and scribbled underneath it in tinier, childlike handwriting was the name Jughead. 

“Odd,” Betty mumbled, thinking about how strange the name Jughead sounded in her mind. Yet, there was a familiarity to it that made it seem ordinary somehow. Like it was the most common, natural-sounding name she had ever heard. 

Having found the name she was hoping to find, Betty prepared her hands to close the journal and head back to her sister’s coffee shop. But before she could follow through, and even though she could never explain it, something stopped her. It was as if there was a pull in the universe causing her eyes to wander over to the next page and read the story that was scribbled carelessly onto the white paper.

“No way,” Betty breathed, letting the words sink in as she flipped to the next page. After reading several entries all about the same girl, Betty slammed the journal and sprinted back to the coffee shop. 

“Polly!” she exclaimed as she threw open the door, dodging several customers as she made her way back to the counter. 

“What?” Polly’s eyes went wide as she took in her sister, all wild eyes and heavy breathing. “Did you give that guy his journal back?”

“Not yet,” Betty admitted, her breath coming in heavy spurts as she tried to slow her heart rate. “But I was looking through it and-”

“You read it?” Polly gasped. “Elizabeth Cooper, you should be ashamed.” 

“I know, I know, but listen to this,” Betty opened to a random page in the journal and started to read the man’s words that had made her heart lurch in her throat.

_“’She wanted to shape young minds. To show them that there was a place for them in the world that was better than what they might have seen in the past. And while she was never quite sure of her ability to succeed, she was positive in her ability to teach them that they could.’”_

“Okay, that’s beautiful and all, but I’m not really sure I’m getting your point,” Polly told her, tossing a rag over her shoulder and leaning against the counter. 

“This entry, and every entry after that, they’re all describing this girl,” Betty explained, holding out the journal for her sister to see. “But the way he writes about her - it never seems like she’s someone that he knows. She’s just this person that exists in this journal but not in real life except-”

“Except?”

“Except I think that she does,” Betty concluded. “And I think that I’m her.” 

“Betty, you realize you sound psychotic correct?” Polly threw the rag at her sister, who lunged forward to catch it at the exact wrong moment and let the piece of cloth fall to the floor. 

“I know how it sounds, but do you remember that story I wrote for English class in the tenth grade?” Betty asked, bending down to scoop up the rag and set it on the counter. “The one that mom hated?” 

“Yeah, it was that piece about the boy who’s father was never around because he was some sort of drug dealer or something. And then he gave the boy a present for his birthday that changed his life before he left town for good and never came back,” Polly recounted the story and looked up to raise her eyebrows at Betty as if to say, ‘so what?’ “Yeah, I remember. Why?”

“Read this,” Betty shoved the journal in Polly’s direction and pointed to the description on the back cover. Rolling her eyes, Polly quickly read about how the owner of the journal got that very book from his father on his sixteenth birthday and then never saw him again after that day. 

“It has to be some sort of coincidence,” Polly concluded, shutting the journal and handing it back to Betty.

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Betty whispered, running her fingers along the etchings on the front cover. “I think that I was writing about this man - Jughead - and I think that he was writing about me.” 

“That’s insane, Betty, you don’t even know each other,” Polly reminded her. 

“I know that,” Betty sighed. “But I think that this is a sign - finding this journal, meeting him today - I think that I was meant to know him.” 

“Okay, let’s say that’s true,” Polly cautiously gave in, folding her arms over her chest as she narrowed her eyes at Betty. “What are you going to do?” 

“I’m going to find him,” Betty declared, grabbing her purse from the stool she had left it on and shoved the journal safely inside. “And then he’s going to explain to me how he’s been writing about me for eight years when I only just met him this morning.” 

Before her sister could protest, Betty headed out the door and made her way to the only newsroom in town, determined to find the man who owned the journal. The man who, she knew in her heart, she was meant to know. And the man who was about to change her entire world.


	2. The Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty makes her way to the Riverdale Register to return the journal she found in the cafe, but will the conversation she had been planning to have with the owner about the girl he has been writing about for years go as planned?

Betty Cooper stumbled through the revolving glass doors of the tallest building in town, the Riverdale Register. Betty took a look around the recently renovated lobby, her eyes widening in awe at the pristine marble flooring and state of the art computers on every desk from the receptionist’s right in front of her, to the reporters’ in the back room. 

“May I help you?” The man standing behind the reception area asked in a nasally voice, his nose turning up to the tall ceiling at the sight of Betty and her too-tight ponytail and wrinkled baby blue skirt clumsily sliding her way across the recently mopped wet floor. 

“Yes! I’m looking for a Mr. Jones,” she explained once she had made her way safely over to him, holding onto the counter tightly with one hand and smoothing down her blouse with the other. “Um, he left something of his at my sister’s cafe this morning and I’m here to return it.” 

“Do you have a name?” the man wanted to know, glancing down at his computer briefly to check something before flicking his eyes back up in her direction impatiently. 

“Uh, I do. But whatever name you give him won’t mean anything to him,” Betty informed him, her words coming out rushed and jumbled as she scrambled to explain herself. “He doesn’t actually know me - I mean apparently he writes about me, but he’s never met me. Well technically he met me this morning, but it was only briefly and I don’t think he really even looked me in the eye or-”

“Rambling crazy lady with a journal,” the man spat, cutting her off and eyeing her with a look of annoyance as he picked up the phone on the counter to punch in a number. “That’ll be enough of a description for him, thanks.” 

“Rude,” Betty muttered under her breath, backing away from the desk and rubbing her arms up and down uncomfortably as she waited for the receptionist to make his phone call. 

“He’ll be down in a moment,” he told her. “Try not to touch anything while you’re waiting. In fact, try not to even look at anything breakable until Mr. Jones arrives.” 

“Well okay then,” Betty mumbled, making her way over to the wall on the opposite side of the reception area where she found row after row of noteworthy articles from past news editions, framed and polished for the entire office to read. 

Betty scanned the wall, taking in title after title until one particularly lengthy column that sat at the very end, nearest to the staircase, caught her eye. It was written by the very man of whose journal she was lugging around in her purse, and as curiosity got the better of her, she began reading until she was completely immersed in his words, just as she had been when she was reading his journal. 

“Wow, he’s good,” she breathed, staring at the article in awe, feeling completely captivated by this stranger’s thoughts on the boycott at the local theater a few months back. 

“I hated that article.” 

A voice coming from behind Betty startled her into shuffling backwards, nearly knocking a ceramic vase off the shelf hanging on the back wall. She turned to find the man she had seen at the cafe that morning descending the stairs, the beanie he was wearing earlier now absent from his head, leaving him with a thick head of dark hair that Betty thought suited his features very nicely. 

“I sat outside that theater for sixteen hours waiting to talk to some C-list celebrity who supposedly organized the entire event and who, turns out, had no idea what he was even boycotting,” Jughead explained as he took the few steps to stand beside her, his eyes focused on the wall in front of them. 

“Well apparently it was good enough to make the wall,” Betty pointed out, turning on her heel to gesture to the framed articles laid out before them. “Looks like you have a lot of wall-worthy articles.”

“Yeah,” Jughead muttered, his expression distant as he finally turned to meet her gaze. “So what’s this I hear about a crazy lady and a journal?”

“Right! First of all, not crazy,” Betty began, turning back to glare at the smug receptionist with as much disdain as she could muster. “Well, I mean I might be crazy. I lied to you. I’m not here to give you back your journal - well I am, but I think that we should talk about it first - not in a weird way or anything. I just think that-”

“I’m hoping that there’s a ‘second of all’ amidst all that… whatever that was,” Jughead teased, quirking an amused eyebrow in her direction as he gestured back towards the receptionist polishing the counter with his coat sleeve. “Because I’m really starting to see what Matthew was saying about your tendency to ramble in long strides now.” 

“Second of all,” Betty said with mock-annoyance, stepping forward to shove the leather-bound book into his chest. “Here’s your journal.” 

Jughead took the journal from Betty, their fingers brushing ever-so-slightly and lingering atop the front cover for just a split second. To anyone watching from the outside looking in, it would have looked like an accidental encounter - nothing more than a meaningless touch from two strangers. But they felt it in their fingertips - that electricity that clued them into the idea that maybe this was more than a coincidence. Maybe this was fate. 

“Uh,” Jughead blinked as Betty quickly drew her hand away from the journal, shaking his head as a way to snap himself out of his trance. “Thanks for returning it. I rarely go anywhere without this thing, so it would have been a tragedy of monumental proportions if I had lost it.” 

“No problem,” Betty smiled shyly, backing away from Jughead and crossing the room to fiddle with the vase she had almost knocked over that was sitting on one of the shelves hanging on the back wall. “It’s really beautiful by the way. The journal itself I mean, not the writing. Not that I’ve read you’re writing - other than the article on the wallI mean! But I’m sure that if I did read it, it would be beautiful too I just-”

“You definitely read it,” Jughead concluded, smirking knowingly at the flustered look creeping onto the pinks of her cheeks as he resisted the urge to burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.

“Yeah, I really did,” Betty admitted, biting her bottom lip nervously as she turned back to meet his gaze with a look of guilt plastered on her face. 

“So if that’s what you wanted to talk about,” he muttered, taking a few steps along the shiny marble floor to meet her in front of the shelves with a smug grin. “Don’t let me stop you.” 

“The girl you write about in the journal,” Betty began, the cautious tone to her voice causing Jughead’s eyes to shimmer slightly with amusement. “Is she real?”

“I’ve been writing about her since I was sixteen,” Jughead explained, his eyes flicking down to scan the picked-at leather on the book he still was clutching in his hands. “But I’ve been dreaming about her long before that. I can picture her in my mind, but I never actually see her face. It’s mostly just lines and faint hues of color but what stands out - what makes her real to me - is her presence. So poignant and vibrant and beautiful. But to answer your question, no she’s not a real person. I’ve never met her. I know it sounds crazy, but I don’t think a woman like her could ever really exist.” 

“I mean she could,” Betty said slowly, her brows drawing together in annoyance at the skeptical tone to his voice. “There are people all over the world with those qualities. You could have passed her in the street and not have even known it. In fact, she could be in this very building right now and you could be missing the opportunity to tell her and show her everything you’ve written in that journal.” 

“I don’t think so,” Jughead said confidently, although there was a faint line at the corners of his lips that gave the impression that he didn’t truly believe the words he was saying. “Like I said, I’ve been writing and creating her character with my own words for so long - I would have known if I had crossed her path.” 

“I just think you’re too quick to assume that your mystery journal woman is just a fantasy,” Betty shot back, her hands moving to her hips as she hurried to follow him as he made his way towards the elevators. “In fact, I find it pretty presumptuous of you to assume that you’re talented enough to create such a dynamically strong person with just your words alone.” 

“Is it now?” 

“Yes,” Betty spat, her arms flying into the air dramatically as she resisted the urge to rub the smug grin off his face with the elbow of her rose-colored cardigan. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a room full of energetically frustrated third graders to teach so - you’ve got your journal back. Goodbye, Mr. Jones. I hope you and the girl from the journal have a wonderful life together on pen and paper.” 

With the swing of her slicked back ponytail, Betty spun around to march away from the man in the expensive-looking suit and fancy briefcase, her small hands pulled into tight fists as she tried to control her breathing. 

“Ms. Cooper?” 

“What?” Betty quickly turned around to meet his amused gaze with a look of fuming aggravation, her sensible loafers skidding to a stop so suddenly that she was sure that they would leave a scuff on the pristine floor. 

“The exit is that way,” Jughead pointed in the opposite direction, his smirk still evident on his lips as he tried his best to hide the amusement that was bursting through every pore. 

“I knew that,” Betty muttered, pulling on the hem of her white blouse and stomping her way to the front of the newsroom’s main entrance. 

As he watched her shuffle her way out of the building, throwing a menacing glare in the rude receptionist’s direction before pushing through the glass doors and stepping out onto the bustling streets of Downtown Riverdale, Jughead couldn’t help but smile faintly to himself as he clutched the worn leather journal in his fist. Bringing it up to rest in front of his chest, he flipped it to the very last page, grateful that Betty had only thought to read the first few entries. 

_Her golden hair may have resembled that of an angel’s glowing halo, immaculate and knowing not of anger or malice, but the fire in her eyes as she flicked her chin up and away from his playful gaze revealed the secret that she had kept locked away in the confines of the very darkest parts of her. She was more than just a kindhearted school teacher from the very heart of suburbia - she was a rebellious warrior that wouldn’t stand for mistreatment or judgments of any kind. The boy knew, as he followed her swinging ponytail and swaying hips out of the towering glass building, that he was going to have a tangling mess of a time attempting to exist in the same world as her. But it was going to be a thrilling whirlwind of a time trying._

Jughead closed the journal, tucking it beneath his arm as he turned on his heel to head back in the direction of the elevators. 

“Exactly what I thought she’d be like,” he whispered to himself once the doors had opened, leaning forward to press the button that would send him to the fourth floor. Thinking back to the day he had written that entry over a week ago, he was still completely in awe with the accuracy of his words and how they had matched the real-life encounter precisely. As the doors closed, Jughead wondered what he was going to write next, and if it would ever measure up to the feeling he got when he was in the same room with the real Betty Cooper. 

–

“He’s unbelievable, Pol,” Betty mumbled into her bowl of ice cream, adjusting her position on the stool and glancing up to meet her sister’s gaze. “I swear I’ve never seen someone so pompously in love with his own writing before, it was insane.” 

“From what you’ve told me, it sounds like he just confirmed that the girl he was writing about in his journal wasn’t a real person,” Polly admitted, bending down to pick up a clean spoon from underneath the counter and helping herself to Betty’s sundae. “And it sounds like your anger stems from the fact that he wasn’t actually writing about you.”

“So not true,” Betty denied the accusation through a mouthful of vanilla ice cream and rainbow sprinkles, pushing the bowl across the counter and frowning. “This sundae doesn’t have enough chocolate syrup.” 

“What’s the matter, Betty?” Polly quirked an amused eyebrow at her sister. “The ice cream not bitter enough for you?”

“I am not bitter,” Betty gasped, narrowing her eyes at her sister as she reached forward to swipe at her arm with the back of her hand. 

“You might wanna tell our class that, Bebby,” Betty’s niece, Jenny, hopped onto the stool next to her, reaching across the counter to pick up the spoon that she had just abandoned and shoveling a scoop of sundae into her mouth. Betty smiled faintly at the nickname that Jenny and her twin brother JJ had given her when they were two and couldn’t say their t’s correctly, secretly grateful that it had stuck so that she could revel in the fond memories she had of them when they were babies every time they said her name. “Our morning work today was to create a short story around a character based on someone we know in real life and to ‘not assume that our characters are the end all be all of literary genius that the world was lacking until we picked up a pen and put it to paper.’“ 

“Elizabeth Cooper,” Polly’s mouth dropped open as she pulled the bowl of ice cream away from her daughter, eliciting a disapproving pout to form on her lips as she leaned back in her stool. “You’re telling me that I’m sending my kids to school to be taught by some sourpuss teacher who can’t separate her personal life from her job?”

“It wasn’t my finest teaching moment,” Betty admitted, turning in her seat to place a hand on either side of Jenny’s smooth cheeks. “But that was privileged niece-auntie information, little miss. You’re making me consider asking Principal McCoy if I can have your brother in my class instead of you.” 

“You wish you had the better twin,” JJ told her as he sauntered his way over to his family from the back of the room. “But we can’t all be that lucky.” 

“JJ, go back to the loser’s section of the cafe where you belong,” Jenny teased her brother, her long red hair nearly smacking him in the face as she swiveled her stool around to face him. “Girl talk doesn’t involve boys who can’t remember to shower everyday like a normal human being.” 

“At least I don’t have bad breath,” JJ shot back, warranting Jenny to stick her tongue out at him in protest and for JJ to tug on the bottom of her ponytail. 

“Enough you two,” Polly intervened, nodding to the storage room with a flick of her chin. “Go get your stuff, your Dad is going to be here any minute to pick you up and Aunt Bebby and I aren’t finished with our conversation.” 

“I think you should just talk to him,” Jenny told Betty as she hopped off the stool, placing a small hand on her cotton-covered shoulder and shrugging. “Grandma Alice says that boys who play hard to get are really just hiding something that they’re too afraid to show the rest of the world.” 

Betty pulled her niece into a tight hug, kissing the top of her head before pulling back to smile down at her with a dumbfounded look on her face. “Are you sure you’re only nine?” 

“I have a complex insight into the perils and tribulations of the world for a kid my age,” Jenny shrugged, pushing off on the edge of the counter and turning to join her brother at the other end of the cafe. 

Both sisters turned to look at the pint-sized beauty with wide eyes, her fair skin and flaming red hair resembling her father’s own twin sister more and more each day. “Get out of here, you little rugrat,” Polly ushered her daughter to the back of the room and leaned across the counter to meet Betty’s gaze. “She’s right you know. If you’re so sure that his journal was written about you, I think you should tell him that. He might think you’re insane and suggest I send you to a mental institution in the end. But it’s worth a shot, you know?” 

“I don’t know, Polly,” Betty mumbled uncertainly. “What if I don’t measure up to the girl in the journal? He already said that he doesn’t think she could exist. How could I live up to those kinds of standards?” 

“You don’t have to live up to any standards,” Polly reminded her, coming around the counter to place a hand on either side of Betty’s shoulders. “You’re my sister and if he doesn’t like you for exactly who you are, regardless of what he wrote in that silly journal of his, then he’s not worth your time. In fact, send him to me and I’ll teach him a thing or two about messing with my little sister.” 

“Thanks, Pol,” Betty gave her sister a grateful smile, squeezing her arm reassuringly as she fiddled with a chipped piece of wood on the countertop with her other hand. 

“You really believe that you have a connection to him?” Polly asked, reaching up on her tiptoes to retrieve the chocolate syrup from the top shelf and setting it on the surface in front of Betty. “You really think you guys could have been writing about each other for all those years even though you’ve never met until this morning?”

“I feel it,” Betty said confidently, lifting the syrup container and squeezing the sugary liquid onto the semi-melted ice cream until the frozen treat was completely coated in chocolate. “I know that sounds crazy and I know it doesn’t make sense, but I think that we were writing about each other’s lives so that we could eventually find each other and-”

“And what?” 

“I don’t know yet,” Betty admitted. “But I guess I’ll find out when I talk to him.” 

The ‘ding’ coming from front of the cafe caused Polly’s head to snap up, watching with wide eyes as the customer who had just walked through the door turned the corner to head to his usual booth. “Well you might want to figure it out soon,” Polly told her, pointing to the raven-haired man sliding into his seat in front of her. “Because he just walked into the cafe.” 

Betty followed her gaze to find Jughead Jones pulling that same leather-bound journal out of his messenger bag, placing it delicately on the counter as he reached for the menu resting on the table beside him. 

“Wish me luck,” Betty mumbled to her sister, jumping off the stool and straightening out her slightly-wrinkled blouse with a quick tug of her hand. 

“Luck,” Polly told her, giving her a lopsided smile as she watched her sister march her way over to the boy sitting in the booth. 

Betty took a deep breath and navigated her way through the dining area, nearly knocking over a petite waitress carrying a tray full of coffees and tripping over a slightly-too-pulled-out chair before stepping in front of the booth with a look of determination. 

“Elizabeth Cooper,” Jughead greeted her without looking up from the menu to meet her gaze with that same amused grin. “Come to snoop through my journal and call me names again or did we think up a new tactic this time around?”

“Wipe that smirk off your face,” Betty demanded, willing herself to stay focused and to not get swept up by the way his hair fell elegantly over his eyes or how his lips did a deliciously attractive twitching motion when he was restraining himself from smiling up at her. “We need to talk.”

“What could we possibly have to talk about?” Jughead asked innocently, his hand resting on the journal sitting on the table next to him, causing Betty to narrow her eyes at him suspiciously. 

"I think the girl that you’ve been writing about is real,” Betty admitted, her heart pounding wildly in her chest as she mustered up the courage to say what she had been feeling since she had found the journal earlier that morning. “And I think that I’m her.”

Jughead’s head lifted slightly to meet her eyes for the first time since she had walked over to his booth. “Have a seat, Betty,” he said calmly, his expression remaining neutral as he gestured to the other side of the booth with one hand. “I guess we have more to talk about than I thought.”


	3. The Other Boy in Her Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jughead meets the other man in Betty's life. Betty gets to take home the journal, while Jughead has a dream that suggests that she might be in danger in the near future. Meanwhile, Betty has an important decision to make that will effect the rest of her life.

The waitress set two cups of coffee down on the table in front of the raven-haired journalist and the doe-eyed school teacher, her gaze burning an angry hole into the side of Betty’s head as her eyes danced with jealousy at the sight of her favorite customer sitting with another girl. 

“You don’t think I’m crazy?” Betty asked, leaning her elbows on the surface and nearly knocking over the cup of hot liquid that Naomi had perched dangerously close to the edge of the table. “Most people would have assumed _I_ was the one who flew over the cuckoo’s nest and then just kept going until I fled the whole county.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” Jughead assured her, picking up the cup of coffee and taking a sip, his lips curling into a satisfied smirk that was formed partly because of Betty’s incessant ramblings, and partly because of the quality of the drink he had grown accustomed to over the past few months. “In fact, I was kind of expecting this reaction. Although I would have put my money on more frantic arm movements or maybe some mild fainting, but you know this works too.” 

It took a few seconds for the realization to form across her expression, settling into the raised eyebrows and widened eyes that made her look much younger than what she actually was. “You left the journal here on purpose,” she gasped. “You knew it was me all along - god, I knew she had to be real and I knew you had to have felt what I felt when I handed you back the journal!”

“What did you feel?” Jughead quirked a curious eyebrow, that same amused smirk still evident on his lips as he leaned forward to rest his arms on the table. 

“Uh, I don’t know,” she stuttered, her cheeks blushing a bright pink rose color as she reached for the first thing on the table she could find to keep herself busy. “It was like - like there was this spark of electricity and this vague feeling of familiarity. Like we were meant to know each other even though we hadn’t met until now.” 

A moment of silence passed between them just then, their eyes locked on one another as a flood of unspoken words and emotions floated in the space around them.

“I mostly felt cold,” Jughead joked, his gaze breaking away from hers as he reached for his coffee cup once more. “Your hands are like ice cubes you know.” 

“Very funny,” Betty muttered, her tone playful and mocking as she leaned back into the booth and crossed her arms over her chest to quirk a curious eyebrow in his direction. “So when did you realize it was me? There had to have been a moment, right?”

“You were moving supplies into your classroom last year, right before school was about to start back up again,” Jughead explained, the story unfolding as if he had thought about it a dozen times before this moment. “You stubbed your toe on a desk and instead of cursing or crying like most people would have done, you sucked in a deep breath, shook your hands frantically in front of you as if that was going to make the pain go away faster, and just counted to ten until the aching dulled.”

Betty blushed as she thought back to the day that Jughead was explaining. “I found that counting to ten works better than letting my anger get the better of me.” 

“Well about a week prior to that I had written this entry,” Jughead told her, picking up the journal next to him and flipping to an entry that had documented the encounter in perfect detail. “That’s when I knew that who I had been writing about since I was sixteen had to have been real and she couldn’t have been anyone but you.”

“Why didn’t you say anything sooner?” 

“You had to see it for yourself,” Jughead shrugged, closing the book and setting it on the surface in front of them. “And you had to be ready for it.” 

“I have so many questions,” Betty said, her breathy laugh causing Jughead’s heart to skip a beat as he took in the way her bottom lip folded underneath her front teeth when she was nervous and how her beautiful green eyes lit up when she found herself getting excited about something. “Okay, well I guess what I’m really curious about is when you started writing about me. How old was I? What was I doing? Were you writing about me before you got the journal, or did you-?” 

“I’ll tell you what,” Jughead smirked, placing a hand on the leather surface of the book and pushing it across the table in her direction. “You take the journal tonight. Read a little bit at a time and learn about how I’ve been seeing you in my eyes for the past eight years. If you still have questions after that, feel free to ask, okay? ” 

“Are you sure?” Betty asked, a wave of uncertainty clouding her expression as her mind drifted to every possibility that could go wrong if she were to take the journal home herself. “That’s a lot of responsibility. I’m not sure I can handle the pressure of not spilling coffee on one of the pages or letting my cat use the leather cover as her scratching post. If you haven’t noticed, I’m not the most graceful woman to ever walk the planet.”

“I trust you,” he said without hesitation, never once breaking her gaze as he inched the journal a little closer to her. 

“You don’t even know me,” Betty reminded him, the vulnerability in her tone causing Jughead to resist the urge to reach across the table and smooth the lines of worry forming between her eyebrows. 

“I think we both know that’s a lie.” 

Betty looked from the journal, to the man with the kind eyes and broken smile, and back again, her head swimming with the need to tell him that he wasn’t the only one who had been writing about a mysterious stranger over the past few years. She knew that this whole situation was not unlike a tale that a child would find amusing in one of their fairytale storybooks, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was meant to take the journal and that she was meant to know Jughead Jones in a way that she had never known anyone. 

“Jughead, there’s something you should know. You’re not the only one who-”

“Betty!” 

Before Betty could finish her sentence, the door to the cafe opened with a loud clang and an irritated jingle of the bells that Polly had insisted her establishment needed in order to run effectively. Her head snapped up at the sound of her name to find the red-headed boy she had known most of her life making his way over to their booth, his tie hung loosely around his neck and the top button of his freshly pressed white dress-shirt unbuttoned in a careless fashion. 

“There you are. You didn’t forget about tonight did you?” he asked, slightly breathless as he adjusted the striped tie around his neck and began tying it as best he could. 

“Tonight?” 

“Dinner with our parents,” he explained, fiddling with the collar of his shirt so that it covered the tie’s silky fabric. “Alice was cooking up a feast bigger than Christmas and Easter dinner combined, we were supposed to bring the pie, my Dad’s in charge of the booze, is any of this ringing a bell?” 

“Yes,” Betty shook her head as if she just had a realization that hadn’t crossed her mind until that moment. “I guess I did forget. Um, Archie, this is Jughead Jones. Jughead, this is Archie Andrews my-” 

“Boyfriend,” Archie finished for her, sticking out his hand for Jughead to take and flashing a toothy grin down in his direction. “Nice to meet you, man. Did you go to Riverdale High?” 

“No, Southside actually,” Jughead explained, meeting his smile with one of his own as he shook his hand with as much energy and confidence as Archie was exuding. “I remember seeing you play against us at the state championships our senior year. You played an incredible game.” 

“Thank you! You know, the final three minutes of that game were probably in my list of the top ten best moments of my entire life,” Archie admitted, his smile widening the more he thought about the prime highlight of his glory days, but quickly turned to Betty with an apologetic gaze as he realized that he could have just made a fatal mistake. “Besides the day this one agreed to go out with a mindless jock like myself, of course.” 

“Of course,” Jughead muttered politely, his eyes drifting to Betty, who quickly averted her gaze to her hands resting awkwardly on the table in front of her. 

“So were you at the game as a fan or were you a part of the band or-” 

“No, I was on my school’s newspaper,” Jughead explained. “I was covering the game for an article.”

“Oh, awesome! So you’re a writer then?” Archie wondered, his arm automatically moving to rest along the top of the booth behind Betty’s head, causing her to squirm uncomfortably on the vinyl material covering the seat as she silently wished that she could be anywhere else but in that booth. 

“Yeah, I’m a junior editor at the Riverdale Register actually,” Jughead told him, pushing his now-empty coffee cup to the edge of the table and signaling for Naomi to bring him another from across the room. “I don’t write as much as I used to, but I put everything I have into what I do get to write. Including projects outside of the newspaper.” 

Jughead met Betty’s gaze with an amused raised eyebrow, causing her cheeks to flush pink and her hand to reflexively cover the journal resting in her lap. 

“Uh, Arch, we should probably-” Betty scrambled out of the booth quickly, already pushing him towards the door with one hand while holding the book behind her back with the other. 

“Right!” Archie agreed, checking his watch resting elegantly on his wrist before sticking his hand out to Jughead one last time. “Well, it was nice to meet you, man. Jughead was it?” 

“As strange it sounds, yes,” Jughead muttered, taking Archie’s hand and giving it a firm shake. “Jughead Jones. Nice to meet you too.” 

“I’ll meet you at the car, okay Archie?” Betty said, her voice much too high and breathless as she struggled to keep her heart from pounding out of her chest. “I’m going to grab an apple pie from the kitchen before we go.” 

“Sounds good,” Archie smiled at his girlfriend, planting a quick kiss on her cheek before waving to Jughead and exiting through the same door of which he had entered to head to his Volvo parked on the street in front of the cafe. 

Betty quickly turned back to Jughead, her blonde ponytail whipping her in the face as she delicately slid the journal into her purse, making sure not to rip any of the pages or snag the leather on the front cover. 

“Meet me at the pavilion by Sweetwater River tomorrow night at 7 o’ clock,” Betty whispered, adjusting the purse on her shoulder and stepping out of the way so that Naomi could shimmy around her to refill Jughead’s cup with coffee. “I have a feeling I’m going to have a lot of questions.” 

“See you then, Betty Cooper,” Jughead agreed, nodding to Naomi before returning his gaze back to Betty with a knowing smirk. 

“Wait a minute,” Betty muttered, narrowing her eyes at him as she tried to interpret the smug look on his face. “Did you already write about this? Do you already know what I’m going to ask you tomorrow?”

“Guess you’ll have to read the journal to find out,” Jughead shrugged, holding up his cup to her before taking a sip, laughing silently to himself as she rolled her eyes, turned on her heel, and headed back to the kitchen. 

\--

On the rare occasion that Jughead Jones was without his leather-bound journal, the words that he was so used to floating around his head throughout the day would transform themselves into life-like pictures, vivid daydreams that would pop up without warning and race across his mind like runners in a marathon. As he sat in the old movie theater in the heart of downtown Riverdale, Jughead’s focus drifted from the talking figures on the screen, to the images that were making themselves more and more prominent in his own mind, his eyes drifting closed as the girl from the journal, once a faceless figment of his imagination, now clearly and unmistakably Elizabeth Cooper, made her way into his thoughts.

_The sound of rushing water filled her ears, the rain pounding against the rocks surrounding the river, soaking her clothes and making it almost impossible for her to see the person reaching out to her from the shoreline._

_“You shouldn’t be here!” she called out to them, her voice frantic with worry as she struggled to hold onto her footing on the slippery boulder. “It’s not safe!”_

_The figure took a step into the water, their foot fully submerged as they tried to make their way over to her amidst the fast-moving current and fallen tree branches zipping past them that had been washed away from the storm._

_“No, don’t come any closer!” she warned, her eyes pleading with them to turn back and leave her to fend for herself. “You’re going to slip!”_

_As if her words hadn’t found their way across the river in their direction, the brave, yet unbelievably stubborn rescuer took another step into the water, the current pulling them a few feet away from her before they had a chance to react._

_“No!”_

_Just as she lunged forward to grab the person’s wrist, Betty’s foot slid out from underneath her and she was swept into the water. No one else was around to hear her. No one was there to save her. And there was absolutely no hope._

“Betty!” Jughead called out into the nearly-empty theater, his forehead damp with sweat and his heart pounding hard against his chest as he struggled to shake the image of Betty’s two emeralds for eyes going wide as she slipped into the river, her lungs filling with water as she struggled to stay above the surface. 

When Jughead wrote an entry in his journal, the words would come to him in waves, leaving him to string each thought together piece by piece on his own. But this was too vivid. This was almost like a vision, as if he were watching a scene unfold just like the film that was being projected on the screen in front of him. 

“It was just a dream,” he assured himself, wiping away the bead of sweat on his forehead with the back of his sweater and adjusting his position in his seat. “You don’t have your journal, so it can’t be real. She’s fine. Everything’s fine.” 

And this is what he told himself over and over again, the words drowning out the movie, and everything else that would make him feel a single shred of normalcy, as he tried to push away the image and the sounds and the feeling that Betty Cooper, the girl he had just met but had somehow known in some offhand, bizarre twist of fate since he was just a teenager, might be in trouble in the near future and he wouldn’t be able to save her. 

\--

Betty stared into her plate full of slightly overcooked delicacies, pushing her peas around with her fork like she was a little kid again and wishing she could run upstairs into her old bedroom and devour every last page of the journal still sitting in her purse until Jughead’s words filled her mind and made her feel whole for the first time in what felt like years. 

“The roast is wonderful, Mrs. Cooper,” Archie announced, spearing a slice of meat onto his fork and scooping it into his mouth. “Seriously, if I could eat this meal everyday for the rest of my life, I would be able to die a happy man.” 

“Archie Andrews, your charm is going to be the death of you if you’re not careful,” Alice Cooper reminded him, the faint blush on her cheeks going unnoticed by everyone at the table apart from her own daughter, who glanced up from her untouched dinner to roll her eyes at her mother in complete disbelief. 

“I’m afraid he gets that from me, Alice,” Archie’s father, Fred Andrews, admitted, removing his napkin from his lap and dabbing his mouth with it before setting it back on the table beside his plate. “We Andrews men really know how to suck up and kiss ass, as my father would say.” 

“Fred, please, not at dinner!” Mary Andrews protested, her eyes going wide at her husband’s use of such improper language in this formal setting, worried that their longtime neighbors’ would think the worst of them if such an occurrence were to ever happen again. 

“Oh, come on, Mary there’s nothing wrong with the word ‘ass,’ is there Hal?”

“Oh, I know better than to get in the middle of a squabble coming from the two of you, Fred,” Hal Cooper held up his hands in surrender, turning to Alice with a grateful smile and gesturing to his plate of food with one hand. “I’m staying out of this one and focusing on this delicious meal my lovely wife has prepared for us.” 

“Hear, hear,” Alice beamed, holding up her glass of wine with one perfectly manicured hand and nodded for everyone to do the same. 

Noticing her daughter had not glanced up from her plate in the last few minutes, Alice frowned at Betty with a look of warning, resisting the urge to nudge her from underneath the table as she watched her roll her carrots from one end of the plate to the other. 

“Elizabeth, you’ve barely touched your dinner,” she pointed out, grinding her teeth together in annoyance as she struggled to maintain her composure for her guests. “Is there something wrong with the food that I spent over four hours cooking for you and your boyfriend’s family? Shall I go into the kitchen and make you a PB&J like you’re five-years-old again or should I just grab you a bag of chips from the pantry like we’re an uncivilized family who can’t even eat a proper meal together?”

“The food’s great, Mom,” Betty assured her, shoveling a forkful of meat, potatoes, and vegetables into her mouth as she tried her best to ignore the hostile tone to her mother’s voice that she had grown accustomed to over the years. “I’m just tired I guess.” 

“Well sit up straight,” Alice instructed. “If you slouch down any further you’re going to slam your head into your mashed potatoes.” 

“Betty, how’s your class this year?” Mary asked, taking a sip from her wine glass and turning to Betty with a look of curiosity. “I remember getting a call from Archie’s third grade teacher every other week. He was always getting himself into some sort of trouble at that age, so I could only imagine what the kids today are getting themselves into.” 

“My class is great,” Betty told her, an amused smile creeping onto her lips as the thought of something her niece had said earlier that week crossed her mind. “Although, Jenny really helps me keep the more troublesome boys in line. She’s threatened to string them up by their tighty whities if they so much as make a peep during one of my lessons, so I can safely say I’ve got my classroom behavior thoroughly managed.” 

“You really shouldn’t be encouraging her to make threats like that, Elizabeth,” Alice warned her, her fork slamming onto her plate with a loud clang, making everyone at the table jump at the unexpected noise. “Could you imagine the behavior she’s going to think is acceptable when she reaches her teenage years? Polly already has her hands full with J.J and Jenny was her only saving grace!”

“It was a joke, Mom,” Betty reminded her, her voice calm as she met her mother’s gaze from across the table. 

“Well I didn’t find it very funny,” Alice mumbled, pulling back her shoulders and lifting her chin to the ceiling - a telltale sign that she was having trouble controlling her anger and would need to reign in her emotions quickly before she flipped the table onto the hardwood floor. 

“Betty’s great with those kids, Mrs. Cooper,” Archie said quickly, clearing his throat to catch everyone’s attention and looking to Betty with a look of admiration. “She has a connection with them that I’ve never seen in a teacher before. Although, that really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. She was always that way with most of the kids in our class, even in Kindergarten. Her heart was always so pure, so caring - she would do anything for anyone no matter how much it might inconvenience her. I think that’s what I admire the most about her. And that’s only one out of the hundreds of other qualities about her that made me fall in love with her.” 

Archie stood from his seat next to her and came around the chair to stand on the other side of her. Betty’s heart stopped beating as she watched him reach into his jacket pocket, taking a deep breath as he built up the courage to say what he had been keeping to himself for the past few weeks. 

“Which brings me to the reason I asked all of you here today,” Archie turned to their parents sitting at the table surrounding them before turning back to Betty and reaching forward to take her hands in his. “Betty Cooper, I’ve been in love with you since we were six-years-old. You’re the most incredible woman I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, and I’m lucky enough to not only call you my girlfriend, but my best friend. My partner. My soulmate. And after tonight, hopefully, my fiancé.” 

Archie pulled out a small velvet box from his pocket and held it out for her to see before pulling open the top to reveal the most amazing diamond Betty had ever laid eyes on. Betty couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t speak. All she could think about was that word he had used. Soulmate. Was Archie her soulmate? Did she even know the true meaning of a soulmate? If she did, did she even believe in them? 

“Elizabeth Cooper,” Archie breathed, bending down to rest one knee on the hard surface of the floor and removing the ring from the slit inside the box. “Will you marry me?”

Soulmate. Soulmate. Soulmate. The more she threw the word around in her mind, the more she began to realize that she truly did believe that they existed. She believed that there was someone out there who was connected to her heart, her soul, her mind, her everything, and she believed that she had already met him. And deep down, even though she knew it was going to break both of their hearts in ways that neither of them had ever experienced, she knew that Archie was not him.


	4. Lightning Bugs and Traffic Lights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty makes her decision, and we get a look into how Jughead likes to spend his evenings in downtown Riverdale.

They could have heard a pin drop. Silence engulfed the room as a table full of open-mouthed individuals leaned forward in their seats, waiting with bated breath to hear Betty’s response to Archie’s life changing question. 

“Elizabeth, are you going to answer the poor boy or are you going to leave him kneeling there like a terrified statue with a diamond ring the size of Texas?” Alice stood from her seat to slam her palm hard against the surface of the dining room table, her eyes wide with desperation as she urged her daughter to make up her mind. 

“Archie, I…” Betty’s throat closed up, the words she was so desperately trying to communicate to him, unable to stumble out of her mouth. 

“I love you, Betty,” Archie told her, his gaze warm and loving as he pressed the ring into her over-turned palm. “It’s been the two of us ever since I could remember and I couldn’t see a future without you in it. I’d be honored if you would agree to spend the rest of your life with me.”

“I just - I - I think that we should talk in the kitchen,” she mumbled, pulling him up by the arm so that he was now in a standing position and dragging him across the room towards the hallway leading out of the dining room. 

Alice beat the couple to the doorway before they could escape, grabbing her daughter’s arm in a firm grip as she leaned in close to her ear. 

“Betty Cooper, think about what you’re going to say to him very carefully,” Alice warned, her fingers tightening around her forearm as her eyes blazed with intensity. “Don’t make a mistake you’ll regret for the rest of your life.” 

“Let go, mother,” Betty snapped, jerking away from her mother’s grip and taking a step away from her. “This is my life. I’m not a child anymore and you can’t control me. So get out of my way.” 

Betty sidestepped Alice to lead Archie into the pristine kitchen, a bead of sweat beginning to form on her forehead as her mind raced with a million different thoughts and emotions that were sure to end in Archie getting his heart broken.

“What’s going on?” he wondered, his brows knitting together in a mix of confusion and concern for the girl next door he had been in love with for so long.

“I’m wondering if you’ve really thought this through, Archie,” Betty explained, her heart racing a million miles a minute in her chest as she paced back and forth in front of the counter. “I mean this came out of nowhere, don’t you think? I - it’s just- marriage? Marriage is a big deal. It’s real and scary and forever. Don’t you get that?”

“Betty, we’ve been dating since our freshman year of high school,” he reminded her. “Some would argue that we had our first date in the sandbox on the first day of Kindergarten. I’d hardly call me proposing to you an event that came out of the blue.” 

“Archie, I’ve barely seen you in two weeks,” she pointed out, her voice coming out much louder than she had intended as she struggled to keep calm. “That’s not normal for a couple that lives only a few miles from one another, not to mention the fact that our parents are still neighbors and that the schools we work at are right down the road from each other.” 

“You know how busy I’ve been with the team,” he mumbled, a defensiveness to his tone that Betty recognized from the hundreds of other times he had used this as an excuse not to be in the same room as her. “I promised the school board that I would get the high school football program back to where it used to be when we were students there. That hasn’t been easy.” 

“I know that,” she breathed, her voice attempting a note of sympathy, but mostly coming out as tired and frustrated. “I love that you’re so passionate about being a football coach, Arch, but I wish that you would save some of that passion that you have for the sport and use it in your relationship with me.” 

“Betty,” Archie took a step towards her, but she quickly moved out of the way as her gaze dropped to the gold and brown etchings in the marble countertop.

“I realized something over the past few weeks that I think we both need to hear right now,” she explained. “We’ve been together for so long that I think we’ve forgotten what it feels like to just be alone and to not worry about anyone else but ourselves. I think I’ve missed that. And if you’re being honest with yourself, I think you’ve missed it too.” 

Betty ran her fingers through her long blonde locks, a habit she had grown accustomed to on the rare occasion she wore her hair down so that it spilled over her shoulders in golden waves. 

“When we were apart these past two weeks, I found myself feeling that sense of clarity that comes with being on your own and discovering the way you see yourself instead of how someone else sees you, that I haven’t been able to feel over the past few years. It’s been really good for me and I think we need to explore that more,” Betty’s heart pounded frantically in her chest, her words carrying a sense a finality that she hadn’t realized they held until that moment. “As much as I care about you, I think it’s what I need right now.” 

“You’re breaking up with me.” It wasn’t a question, simply a statement laced with disbelief and hurt that made Betty’s heart lurch in her chest. 

“Archie, I’m just-”

“After a ten year relationship, I propose to you and your response is that you would rather be alone than to marry me,” Archie snapped, his cheeks red with anger as he glanced around the room for something, anything, that would reveal this moment to be a nightmare instead of a twisted version of reality that he never asked for. “Is this really happening right now?”

“Arch, I don’t want to hurt you,” Betty muttered helplessly, her eyes pleading with him to understand that she still cared for him the way she always had. “I know you don’t understand it right now, but this is the best thing for the both us.”

“I can’t see how living in a world where we’re not together, is the best for either of us.” 

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her eyes prickling with tears as she backed out of the kitchen and headed for the door leading into the backyard. “I really am.” 

She hated herself for hurting him. She hated herself for letting her uncertainties and concerns about their relationship go unspoken for so long. And more than anything, she hated that all she wanted to do after ending a relationship that had been a significant constant in her life since she was five-years-old, was to run away to a place that was silent and still and secluded so that she could read the journal that the stranger with the dark hair and soulful eyes had given to her earlier that evening. She knew it was wrong. But she couldn’t push the feeling out of her mind. And what made it even worse was that part of her didn’t even want to. 

–

Jughead liked the stillness of walking along the empty streets of downtown Riverdale after dark. Most nights he found himself taking a stroll past the locked-up store fronts and kiosks to find a bench that overlooked the traffic light above the main intersection in the square. He could watch it blink yellow for hours, some days staying until the sun peeked its way up above the horizon and the stoplight changed back to its regular routine, the green and red blinking on suddenly and overtaking the yellow completely. More often than not, he would only come across one or two late-night travelers heading home from a long day of work or a dinner date that lasted too long. What most people wouldn’t understand was that he didn’t mind the solitude. In fact, after his father left him when he was sixteen he had grown accustomed to the feeling of being alone in a way that he almost craved it. He never needed much company other than the girl from his journal and his sister Jellybean. He never had to worry about anyone other than himself, and that was alright with him.

That is, until he met Betty Cooper. 

As he sat on the exact same bench in front of the exact same traffic light on this particular night, he found the loneliness to feel more constricting that it normally did. There was a weighted shadow on his heart that hadn’t been present any of the other nights he had spent sitting there and was now likening him to the knowledge that there should have been someone accompanying him on that street corner. 

“It’s never going to change you know.”

A distant smile formed on his lips at the sound of Betty’s voice, the fateful timing of her appearance oddly fitting for the circumstances of which they had met earlier that same day. 

“No matter how long you stare at it, it’ll keep flashing yellow until about 6:00am,” her tone was light and playful, but there was a sadness evident in the faint dimness settled into the clear emerald of her eyes that Jughead noticed as he turned in his spot on the bench to meet her gaze. 

“I like it like this,” he told her, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees as he continued to watch the light blinking in front of him. “It reminds me of watching the fireflies in my backyard on summer nights when I was a kid. I was always so mesmerized by the way they blinked in and out of color so effortlessly. I remember thinking that I had never seen anything so beautiful and elegant before and I was so fascinated that it would take my mom hours to get me inside. I could’ve stayed out there for hours if she had let me. Anyway, that’s how I feel when I watch this traffic light most nights. As crazy as that sounds, that’s what I think of when I look at it.” 

“An elegant traffic light,” Betty nodded slowly, a look of skepticism present on her face as she took the seat next to Jughead. “Okay, I think I’ve officially heard everything now.” 

“Yeah, well I’ve had a lot of nights to think about it,” he muttered, leaning back onto the bench and adjusting his leg on the pavement so that his jean-clad knee was dangerously close to bumping into her bare one.

“It’s so quiet out here,” she whispered after a moment, pulling her cardigan down her wrists so that they covered her hands, the fabric crumpled into a ball in her fists as she fought a cold chill from overtaking her body. 

“So are you,” he noticed, his mind drifting back to the rambling mess of a girl who returned his journal to him earlier that morning and noticing how calm she seemed at this particular moment. “I know I’ve only known you for a day, but even I can tell you’re not yourself right now.” 

Betty turned her face away from Jughead so that he wasn’t able to notice the tears beginning to form at the corners of her eyes. She let them drift close for a moment as she attempted to stop the drop of liquid from rolling down her cheek.

“I think I really hurt someone tonight,” she admitted, her voice barely above a whisper as she took in a ragged breath. “And I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to make it right.” 

He wanted to reach out and wipe the tear that he knew had escaped her swiping, cardigan-clad fingers, but knew that was impossible. Instead he turned his gaze back to the yellow glow of light reflecting off the puddle of water on the street in front of him and tried to keep his distance. 

“Well I can’t speak for Betty Cooper, sad and beautiful girl resting on a bench on the corner of Third and Crescent, but the girl from the journal?” Jughead turned his head slightly to meet her tear-filled eyes with a reassuring smile. “She wouldn’t do anything unless she felt it was right in her heart. Her heart is my favorite thing about her. And it has rarely ever failed her.” 

“I’m starting to think that we were both wrong about that,” she admitted quietly. “Maybe I’m not her after all. I don’t think I could ever live up to the words you’ve written about this girl. This _fictional girl_. She’s so strong and brave and inspiring. I’m slowly realizing that I’m not any of those things. And maybe I don’t deserve to be.” 

“That proves to me you haven’t read it yet,” he said confidently, his gaze flicking down to her now-folded hands resting comfortably on her lap. “Because if you had read it, you wouldn’t be saying any of this right now.”

Both were quiet a moment as they let Jughead’s words sink in, Betty’s lips quirking into an amused smile as a thought crossed her mind and realization took over her expression. 

“You called me beautiful,” she beamed, turning to narrow her eyes at him and smiling even wider as she watched him squirm uncomfortably on the wooden paneling beneath them .

“I did no such thing.” 

“You did,” she countered, a look of smug accomplishment making its way onto her face as she sat up straight to cross one leg over the other. “Just now, you said ‘Betty Cooper, sad and beautiful girl sitting on a bench.’ 

“I think you’re hearing things.” 

“Yeah well it wouldn’t be the first time,” she muttered, warranting a confused glance from Jughead as he met her gaze with furrowed brows and curious eyes. “Don’t ask.”

“Wasn’t going to,” he told her, a faint smile resting on his lips as he turned to stare amusedly at the soft features of her profile, the angle of her chin and the way the right side of her mouth quirked up and left the other side to rest still and slightly lopsided in the most beautiful way possible causing his breath to catch slightly in his throat. 

“What?” 

“Nothing,” Jughead turned his gaze back to the puddle, biting his bottom lip as he attempted to stop the ever-growing smile that was still creeping onto his face.

“No, seriously, do I have something on my face?” she asked, her hands flying up to frantically swat at her cheeks in her attempt to remove any unwanted critters from finding refuge on her skin. “Is it a bug? Please tell me it’s not one of those mothy looking creatures with the big wings and the antennas that look like they could poke your eye out if-”

“It’s not that,” he assured her quickly. “Do you have the journal with you?” 

“Yeah, it’s right here,” she nodded, pulling the leather-bound book from her purse and setting it delicately on her lap. “Why?”

“Flip to page 34,” he instructed without answering her question, standing from the bench quickly and taking a step down the sidewalk away from the bench and the traffic light and the girl with the journal resting comfortably in the palms of her hands. “Read that passage and then try to tell me that I wasn’t writing about you.” 

Betty frantically flipped through the inked-soaked pages to find the passage Jughead was referring to, her eyes scanning over his words and absorbing every verb and syllable like they were a precious treasure meant to be treated delicately. 

_She had a habit of tugging the sleeves of her sweaters over her fingers, balling the fabric into her fists as if she were trying to hide her hands from the rest of the world. Like they had a secret that the world wasn’t ready to hear, and the pastel pink cotton was her way of concealing it before anyone could figure out what it was. It drove her mother insane. The fabric never quite settled back into all the right positions again, and for someone who craved order the way a moth craved the yellow glow of a streetlamp, it drove her up the wall. And part of her - the twisted, dangerous side that only a rare few had the pleasure of witnessing - found a sense of joy in this that scared her in more ways than one._

“Wait,” Betty slammed the journal shut, springing from the bench and sprinting around the corner to catch up with Jughead. “What’s happening? I mean the journal, you and me? This is crazy right?” 

“Maybe,” he shrugged, turning on his heel to take a few steps closer to Betty, the blinking yellow glow of the traffic light bouncing off the windows of the buildings surrounding them. “But I’ve learned to understand that sometimes the craziest things in our lives turn out to be some of the best gifts to ever be given to us. I believe that. Do you?” 

“I’m starting to,” she breathed, her heart pounding so fast that she thought it might jump right our of her chest. 

“Goodnight, Betty,” Jughead smiled faintly to himself as he backed away from her and began heading back down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. 

“Jughead!” 

Betty pounded down the sidewalk again, pulling on his shoulder so that he spun around to face her. The movement - frantic and unbalanced - caused Betty to trip on a cracked piece of pavement, lurching forward and nearly faceplanting onto the asphalt laid out before them. Jughead reached out to catch her at the exact right moment, one hand clamped firmly around her waist and the other grazing the smooth skin of her palm before she lifted it to rest on his cheek. 

Betty held her breath as her fingers connected with his skin. There was that spark again. A surge of something so much stronger than electricity that neither of them could explain. Betty’s fingers tingled against the cool skin of Jughead’s cheek, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that this was exactly where her hands were meant to be at this very moment. This was exactly where she was supposed to be at this moment. And even though she had told Archie she needed to be alone, she couldn’t shake the feeling that this meeting wasn’t a random coincidence brought on by chance and a little bit of luck. This was fate. And the journal was how it all came together. 

“What now?” Betty breathed, her face so close to his that she could see every mole and freckle on his smooth skin that the dim moonlight allowed her to see. “What happens next to the girl in the journal?”

“I guess you’ll just have to read it to find out,” Jughead told her for the second time that night, removing himself from their embrace and smirking to himself as he glanced from the journal that she was clutching in one hand, to the stunned look resting on her o-shaped mouth and wide green eyes, and back to the traffic light. 

Betty watched as he made his way down the sidewalk, her shoulders hunching slightly in defeat as she stumbled back to the bench and flipped open to the first entry in the journal. She had found the solitude that she had been craving a few hours before. But she couldn’t help but feel an absence next to her where Jughead had just been, causing her heart to flutter in her chest as she began to read his words, her gaze never once leaving the pages in front of her until the sun nudged its way over the tall buildings of downtown Riverdale and the traffic light blinked green again.


	5. Wake Up Call

“Excuse me?” 

Betty’s eyes twitched open enough for the sunlight pouring onto her overturned cheek to irritate her skin, but quickly buried her head into her arm in protest as she suppressed an aggravated groan. 

“Miss?” 

The sunlight that she was slowly growing to find comforting was suddenly blocked by a large figure standing above her, causing Betty’s eyes to fly open in alarm at the unfamiliar voice as she sat up into an upright position. 

“What?” Betty’s voice was high-pitched and frantic, her eyes darting from one end of the street corner to the other as she tried to blink back the sleepiness still lingering behind her eyelids. “What’s happening, where am I?”

“You fell asleep on a bench outside of the drugstore,” the older woman explained, her lips pursing in disapproval as she reigned in the yapping Yorkie puppy glaring up at her in irritation. “You’ve made quite a spectacle of yourself you know. A crowd has formed.”

“Great, that’s going to go over so well with the snotty parents in the PTA,” Betty mumbled under her breath, smoothing down the flyaway hairs poking up in different directions with both of her hands. “What time is it?” 

“Almost 7:30,” the woman told her, glancing down at her watch quickly as she made no attempt to hide to the evident judgment in her voice. 

“No!” Betty flung herself off the bench, quickly scooping up the purse she had used as a makeshift pillow and rummaging through its contents for her cellphone. “Wait, what day is it?” 

“Friday.”

“No, no, no I’m going to be late for school!” Betty threw her handbag over her shoulder, and then quickly brought it back down to her side. “This is worse than that time my cat ran out of my apartment and got herself stuck in my neighbor’s toilet for almost - why am my telling you this, I have to go!”

Pushing past the woman and her dog, Betty sprinted through the shops of Downtown Riverdale, nearly slamming into the various crowd of work-goers making their way to their early morning jobs until she found herself flinging open the door to her older sister’s cafe. 

“Polly!” she yelled into the nearly-empty diner, her breath coming in hurried spurts as she struggled to slow her heart rate. “Where’s the emergency set of clothes you keep here because you’re as clumsy as I am and you spill the vat of hot soup on yourself more often than you actually successfully transfer the liquid into the bowl?” 

“That happened like one time,” Polly defended herself, emerging from the kitchen with a dirty rag on one shoulder and one of her kids’ backpacks on the other. “Okay, maybe two but I don’t think it was fair because-”

“Polly!” Betty shrieked, her eyes so wide that her sister was sure that they were going to pop right out of her head. 

“Alright!” Polly took in her sister’s frantic expression, setting the bag down on the counter and calmly walking over to Betty with a cautious pair of hands held out in front of her. “They’re in the work room in the top left cabinet. Betty, what the hell is going on? You’re more manic than usual and why does it look like you slept in your clothes from yesterday?”

“Because I slept in my clothes from yesterday,” Betty said matter-of-factly as she darted across the room to begin rummaging through the kitchen for what she was looking for. 

“Betty Cooper, you didn’t do what I think you did with that sharp dressed journalist with the beanie and that devastatingly handsome smile, you met in here yesterday did you?”

Betty slid out of her day-old clothing in the empty kitchen and slipped on the floral-print dress her sister had kept in the cafe for emergencies. 

“What, no of course not!” Betty assured her, stepping out into the dining area and sliding on the cardigan she had just been wearing over the thin spaghetti straps of the dress. “I wouldn’t do that.” 

“Good, because last time I checked you were still dating Archie and as much as you two have had your issues over the past year I didn’t think you would-” Polly stopped mid-sentence when she saw the look on her sister’s face. “What?” 

“I assumed Mom would have called you by now,” Betty mumbled, tucking her bottom lip between her teeth as her gaze dropped down to the freshly-wiped-down counter in front of them. 

“What happened?” Polly’s voice was full of concern as she gestured for Betty to take a seat in one of the nearest booths, reaching out to take one of Betty’s hands in her own. 

“I broke up with Archie last night,” Betty announced, the words coming out slow and unsure of themselves, as if Betty herself was still struggling to let the reality of the situation sink in and make itself known. “Well, he proposed first, and then I broke up with him.” 

“Whoa, what? Betty, back up what are you talking about?” 

“I don’t really have time to explain right now, Pol, but I promise you’ll be by first stop when I get home from school okay?” Betty squeezed her sister’s hand reassuringly before turning in her seat to slide back out of the booth, but Polly caught her by the elbow before she could get anywhere. 

“Betty, it wasn’t because of Jughead Jones was it?” 

Polly hadn’t said it the day before, but she could see the look in her little sister’s eyes when she was talking about the mysterious journal and the man who had conveniently left it for her to find and return to him. She knew that Betty was going to make the whole situation into something more than it was, and it was going to be difficult for her to let any of it go. 

“No, it wasn’t,” Betty promised, gathering her long locks of thick golden hair at the base of her neck and beginning to form it into her classic ponytail. “I realized that after what happened last year, I never really got over it like I said I did. And I don’t think I’ve felt the same way about Archie ever since. It wasn’t fair for either of us to pretend like I did anymore.” 

“I’m proud of you,” Polly whispered after a moment, the shock that Betty had anticipated to see on her sister’s face lacking in a way that made Betty’s eyebrows knit together in confusion. “I’m your big sister, Betty. Do you really think I didn’t already know that’s how you felt? I could see it in your eyes whenever you looked at him. That spark that you once had when you found the other’s gaze? I couldn’t see it anymore. And that’s when I knew that something had to be going on.”

“I tried to find that spark again,” Betty muttered, her eyes beginning to well up with tears as her gaze dropped to the laminated menu resting on the table in front of her. “I really did.” 

“I know,” Polly nodded, her eyes softening in the motherly way that Polly had always looked at Betty, causing the tears in Betty’s eyes to fall gently onto her smooth cheeks. “But maybe you couldn’t find it because it already belonged to someone else. Even if you haven’t met them yet, maybe you couldn’t feel it with Archie because it was already saved for this other person?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Betty mumbled, her expression distant as she finally slid out of the booth without anymore protests from Polly. “I really do have to go. But I love you, Pol. More than you know.” 

“You better,” Polly followed Betty to the door and pulled her into a comforting hug before letting her head down the street. “It’s going to be okay, sis.” 

“I know,” Betty whispered into her sister’s ear, pulling back from the embrace quickly and pushing open the front door to Polly’s Cafe. “Bye!” 

–

Jughead dreamt of kissing Betty Cooper that night. He dreamt that he hadn’t walked away on that street corner, with the firefly-like traffic light blinking a mesmerizing yellow glow across the dark-coated buildings surrounding them. He dreamt that he had the courage to pull her into his arms, sliding his hand across her blushed-pink cheeks and leaning in so close that-

“Jones!”

Matthew, the uptight receptionist who wore the expensive designer suits everyday to work, poked his head into Jughead’s office, breaking him out of his daydreamy trance and causing him to glance up at the door in annoyance. 

“Call on line two,” he told him, his nasally voice nearly causing chills to run up Jughead’s spine as he closed his computer and furrowed his brows at him curiously. 

“Who is it?” 

“Remember when you told me not to tell you who was calling when this particular person called because it made you grumpy and more likely to throw one of these more-than-my-monthly-paycheck expensive laptops out of the 3rd story window?” Matthew gave him a knowing look, amusement washing over his expression as he pushed back from the doorway with one hand. “Yeah, that’s who’s calling.” 

“Shit,” Jughead cursed under his breath, glancing down at his phone as it were the most daunting piece of technology he had ever seen. “Just when I thought today wasn’t going to be as miserable as a Shakespearean tragedy.” 

Picking up the phone, Jughead pressed the flashing number two and took a deep breath, preparing himself for the energy-draining conversation he knew he was about to have. 

“Veronica Lodge,” he greeted the woman on the other end of the line, his voice much too tight and upbeat for it to sound natural. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Cut the niceties, Jughead, I’m calling to do business and nothing else,” she told him, her tone straight and to the point. “I heard you were looking for your next story. Well, I’ve got a big one for you so get your head out of your ass and listen up.”

“Why are you talking like you’re a hard-hitting journalist from a 1932 screwball comedy?”

“That’s not the point,” Veronica said, a spark of annoyance in her voice that caused Jughead’s lips to twitch up in amusement. “The point is that your next story is going to be about local football coach, Archie Andrews.” 

“Archie?” Jughead’s brows furrowed in confusion, the mention of Betty Cooper’s boyfriend causing a wave of something resembling irritation to cross his face. “Why would he be my next story?”

“He was a shoo-in for the NFL draft his senior year at State, but an emergency back home took him out of the running. He took some time off and that was that. He was out,” Veronica explained excitedly, and Jughead imagined her arms gesticulating wildly as she moved them frantically to emphasize the story she was telling. 

“What kind of emergency?” Jughead wanted to know, a flicker of concern sparking somewhere deep within his chest as the affection he felt for the girl he had only known for 24 hours came into his thoughts. 

“Something to do with his long-time girlfriend’s sister’s kid getting in some accident. I don’t know, but what I do know is that he threw away a hell of a career to move back to nowheresville USA for this girl.” 

His mind flashed to an entry in his journal he had written two years before. The words had faded from his memory, but the feeling remained in his thoughts and overtook his entire being. It had been the feeling of sadness and uncertainty and fear that the girl from the journal had never felt until that one moment when she was given a piece of news that threatened to change her entire world. 

“Was the girlfriend’s niece okay?” Jughead wondered, his heart aching for Betty as the journal entry still remained evident in his mind. 

“Yeah, she was fine but-” Veronica stopped suddenly, an air of questioning and confusion evident in her tone. “How did you know it was her niece?”

“You said it was-”

“No I said that it was her sister’s kid, I didn’t say niece or nephew,” she reminded him, and he was sure that if he had been in the room with her, she would be narrowing her eyes at him questioningly. 

“Riverdale might not be the smallest town in America, Lodge, but I do hear things around here,” Jughead pointed out, his voice calm as he tried explain the reasoning for why he knew anything about Betty Cooper when he had only technically met her the day before. “I must have heard about it through the grapevine.” 

“Whatever,” Veronica grumbled, clearly already done with the conversation they were having. “The reason I was calling is because Archie Andrews is coming back to the game.” 

“Coming back to the game?” Jughead questioned. “What does that mean?”

“He’s playing football again,” Veronica explained, barely able to hold in her excitement. “He’s making a come back and you’re going to be the first reporter to write about it!” 

There was a moment of silence in which neither of them said another word, the declaration of such a proposal causing Jughead’s mouth to go dry and his throat to close up. 

“You’re not saying anything, why aren’t you saying anything?” Veronica asked, an urgency to her tone that made Jughead’s blood boil slightly in annoyance. 

“I guess I’m just confused,” Jughead mumbled. “He has a job, and a life here why would he try to-”

“Well you know that girlfriend I mentioned earlier?” Veronica wanted to know. “Yeah, she dumped him last night. They had been together most of their lives and just like that, BAM! It’s over. Pretty brutal if you ask me.” 

“No one did,” Jughead mumbled to himself, his fingers pinching between his eyebrows as if he were developing a massive headache. 

“So are you going to write this thing or do I have to come down there and convince you in person that this is the story of a lifetime?” 

“Veronica, I don’t think that this is exactly a story,” Jughead tried to tell her, but Veronica didn’t want to hear it and continued on as if she were the only person carrying on the conversation. 

“I’m going to pretend like you didn’t just say that and take that as a yes!” Veronica exclaimed, clapping her hands together excitedly so that it made an audible ‘pop’ sound on Jughead’s end of the receiver. “My people will call your people and we’ll get started on-”

“No, Veronica, I didn’t agree to this I don’t think-”

“-the details! Later, Jones!” And just like that, Veronica ended the call and Jughead was left staring at the phone, mouth opened and eyes wide, the dial tone ringing in his ear as he wondered what he had just gotten himself roped into. 

“I knew I was going to regret taking that phone call,” Jughead muttered, placing the phone back where it belonged and adjusting his position in his desk chair as he thought about how, and if, he was going to explain this to Betty when he saw her later that night. “There’s no way this is going to end welll.”

–

“Bebby?” 

Jenny Blossom stepped in front of her aunt who was sitting at her desk looking completely transfixed by the stack of papers waiting to be graded on the surface in front of her. 

“Everyone’s done with their math tests. I collected them and put them in alphabetical order for you,” Jenny gestured to the pile she had just placed in the basket resting beside her desk. “I even went ahead and put a golden star on my own paper because I know I rocked it. Oh and I sent the class to lunch. They were chomping at the bit to beat the line. It’s pizza Friday you know.”

“Hmm?” Betty shook her head, the sound of her niece’s soft little voice snapping her out of the trance she had fallen into over the past hour and she turned to meet Jenny’s concerned eyes.“Oh, Jenny. Sorry, my mind was somewhere else I guess.”

“Is this about Uncle Archie?” Jenny wondered, and Betty’s head snapped up so that she could furrow her brows at her in confusion. 

“How did you-”

“I overheard Mom talking to Grandma Alice on the phone this morning,” Jenny explained, shrugging nonchalantly as she hopped up onto the stool resting against the wall closest to the Promethean Board. “Grandma’s voice gets really high-pitched when she’s mad and I could pretty much hear everything she was saying.” 

“Well, it’s nothing to be worried about. I’m fine, I promise,” Betty assured her, although her voice gave Jenny the opposite impression, causing her to narrow a pair of skeptical crystal blue eyes down in her direction. “And Grandma will get over it eventually.”

“So around the time JJ and I graduate college?”

“Pretty much, yeah,” Betty smirked at her niece’s quick wit and intuitive nature that she hardly saw in any of her other students, turning slightly in her chair so that her entire body was now facing in Jenny’s direction. 

“If you want I could make you one of my special necklaces. Maybe that’ll make you fell better,” Jenny suggested. “I collect all these special stones that make it have magical healing powers that can even help mend a broken heart if you wear it long enough. Really, it’s true!” 

“A magic necklace made by my favorite niece,” Betty beamed at the porcelain-faced beauty sitting before her, her heart aching with how much she loved her family at that very moment as the thoughts that were causing her so much trouble only a moment ago, completely disappeared. “That sounds like exactly what I need right now, Jenny. Thank you.” 

“That’s what I’m here for,” Jenny told her excitedly, swiveling the stool this way and that as she pushed her feet against the podium. “Think about that when you’re buying mine and JJ’s birthday presents next year. Who gave you a special necklace and who gives you nothing but headaches and disappointment?”

“You, little Miss, need to be nicer to your brother,” Betty scolded her, standing from her chair and crossing the classroom to pick up Jenny’s bright pink lunchbox from the bucket sitting at the front of the room. “And you also need to scoot that sassy tush of yours on over to the lunchroom. Your mother will kill me if she found out I was keeping you from one of her annoyingly nutritiously balanced meals so I could seek out life advice from her nine-year-old daughter.” 

“Hey, I’m cheaper than the professionals and a heck of a lot cuter,” Jenny pointed out, hopping off the stool and crossing her arms in front of her chest as she met her aunt’s gaze with a mischievous smirk. 

“Lunch,” Betty instructed, pushing the lunch bag in her direction with one hand and gesturing towards the door with the other. “Go.” 

Betty watched her niece saunter out of the room, her long red hair swishing effortlessly behind her back as she hurried down the hall to join her classmates in the cafeteria. 

“Days like today can only be made better by the empty calorie junk they sell in the vending machines,” Betty muttered under her breath, reaching underneath the desk to pull out her purse and plop it onto the surface in front of her. She removed her wallet from the bottom of the bag, placing it in her lap and then moving to set the purse back where she found it when a thought suddenly occurred to her. 

“Wait a minute,” she mumbled, digging deeper into the bag as she pushed various receipts and hair ties to the side. “I thought I put the journal back in here last night.”

Her heart lurched as she slid down the chair and fell into a frantic heap on the carpeted floor. Betty dumped the purse’s contents before her, hoping that she had just missed the medium-sized leather book in her crazed state, but soon realizing that this wasn’t the case once the bag was completely empty and the journal was nowhere to be found. 

“This can’t be happening,” Betty breathed, her hands flying up to press down hard on the top of her forehead. “I actually lost the journal.”


	6. Implosions of the Heartbreaking Kind

Jughead hadn’t written in his journal for twenty four hours. That was the longest he had gone without writing in nearly eight years. He felt his fingers twitching and his hands shaking, urging him to pick up a pen and paper and dive into writing about anything he could possibly think of that would bring him any sort of inspiration. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t keep his mind from drifting off to thoughts of Elizabeth Cooper, and the fact that he was going to have to lie to her about writing an article on her ex-boyfriend’s sudden career change.

His mind was cluttered with thoughts and images and feelings that he would have normally documented in the leather-bound book that held all of his most vulnerable ways of thinking and looking at the world through the eyes of Betty Cooper. But without the journal, he found that he physically could not write about her anymore. Not without the journal. 

Sometime after lunch, in his much-too-quiet office in the much-too-pristine building that was home to the Riverdale Register, he was hit with such an intense need to empty the images flitting through his thoughts like one of those fireflies he used to chase when he was a kid, that he had no choice but to sneak a stack of loose leaf paper from the work room and set it on his desk so that he could let the words flow from pen to paper like he normally could. 

But the pen wouldn’t move. The images remained trapped in his own head, screaming at him to release them the way he always had. It was like the journal and his own writing ability were connected somehow. Or at least that was the case when it came to writing about the girl from the journal. 

“Sorry, Betty, but I need that journal back,” Jughead declared, pushing away from his desk and shoving his laptop into his messenger bag. He had an hour before he was supposed to meet Betty at the pavilion, but he couldn’t sit at his desk not writing anything. Maybe some fresh air would clear his head. Or maybe it would just cause the thoughts and unspoken words to become more jumbled. Either way, he had to get out of that office. 

\--

“It has to be here!” 

Betty dove onto the concrete, pushing away the knowledge that millions of dirty shoes had walked these sidewalks as she searched underneath the bench she had used as her bed last night for any sign of the beat-up journal. 

Scrambling to her feet, Betty hurried over to the nearest trashcan, glancing into its foul contents skeptically as she took a deep breath and shoved her hand deep into the pile of garbage. 

“Well, well,” a shrill voice coming from behind Betty caused her to stop dead in her tracks, the judgmental tone all too familiar as she ground her teeth together in annoyance and tried to remain calm. “Elizabeth Cooper digging through the trash like some back alley hobo with zero class and little to no dignity. How appropriate.” 

“What do you want Cheryl?” Betty mumbled, shaking her hand over the garbage as she refrained from wiping her palm on her sister’s emergency backup dress she had borrowed earlier that day. 

“I heard you dumped Archie Andrews to the curb right after he proposed,” Cheryl announced, her silky red hair shining brilliantly as she stepped into the afternoon sunlight. “From what I’ve heard, you’ve always treated him like garbage, kind of like the rubbish you’re rummaging through right this very moment. As it would turn out, that’s something even crueler than what I would have done. Oh, how the tables have turned.”

“You don’t know the whole story,” Betty reminded her, urging herself to keep her voice calm as she gripped the side of the public trashcan so hard that she was sure that she was going to snap off the plastic handle. 

“I don’t need to know the whole story,” Cheryl told her, crossing her arms in front of her chest and raising a challenging eyebrow in Betty’s direction. “All I need to know is that you’re a terrible influence on my young and impressionable niece and nephew.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Jenny and JJ don’t need such negativity in their lives,” Cheryl explained, pursing her cherry red lips in disapproval and placing a hand on her hip. “Not after everything they’ve gone through over the past few years.” 

“You’re talking crazier than usual, Cheryl, which is impressive considering you hardly ever make a shred of sense to begin with,” Betty muttered, glancing away from her brother-in-law’s twin sister, hoping that by breaking eye contact, the conversation would end with it. However, as it had already proven itself from events that occurred earlier in the day, luck was not on her side. 

“Get your shit together, Cooper,” Cheryl spat, stepping so close to Betty that she could feel her breath huffing angrily against her cheek. “You’re acting like a character straight out of a Susanna Kaysen novel, and I don’t think the school board would appreciate one of their employees expressing such manic behavior when their job is to mold the children of Riverdale into stable members of society.” 

“If you’re threatening me Cheryl, at least look me in the eye and say it to my face,” Betty told her, her voice raising slightly as she felt the anger continuing to rise within her chest. “We’re not teenagers anymore. Anything you would like accuse me of, then just say it. We are adults after all, even if it’s easy for you to forget that sometimes.” 

“So then get your head out of the garbage can and start acting like one, you blonde-haired whack job,” Cheryl’s eyes were blazing with such intensity that Betty was sure they were going to pop right out of her head. Taking a deep breath, Cheryl regained her composure and adjusted her designer handbag hanging delicately over her shoulder. “I will be picking up Jenny and JJ from school from now on. I’ve spoken to Jason and that was what we both feel is necessary at this time.” 

“What the hell, Cheryl you can’t-”

“This conversation is over,” Cheryl informed her, slowly turning on her heel to head back in the direction she had been coming from before she had run into Betty rummaging through the garbage. “Have a great day hovering over the trashcans of downtown Riverdale. I hope you’ve finally found your place in the world.”

Betty’s eyes followed Cheryl’s swinging hips down the sidewalk until she rounded the corner, completely out of sight. Her mouth hung open in shock, having been left dumfounded by Cheryl Blossom for the hundredth time in her life. 

“This day couldn’t get any worse, could it?” 

As soon as the words left her lips, she immediately regretted uttering a single syllable of them. 

“Elizabeth Cooper!” 

Alice Cooper’s cold screech made Betty’s blood run cold, wondering if it was too late to turn on her heel and sprint in the opposite direction to catch up with Cheryl. 

“What have I done to deserve such cruelty, universe?” Betty mumbled to herself, watching in horror as her mother stomped her way out of the drugstore and over to where Betty was trying not to faint into the trashcan. 

“I’ve been calling you since you left the house last night,” she snapped, her brows drawing together in anger the way they always had when Betty and Polly were kids. “I have never been more disappointed in you, Elizabeth, how could you do that to poor Archie, he was completely devastated I can’t believe you would turn down his marriage proposal when he has always been nothing but good to you and-”

Betty’s cheeks burned red hot as the anger bubbling inside of her finally boiled over and reached the surface with a vengeance. 

“BUT HE HASN’T MOTHER!” Betty yelled, her voice so shrill that the patrons having an early dinner in the restaurant across the street turned to watch them with looks of curious confusion. 

“I beg your pardon?” Alice said slowly, clearly taken aback by her daughter’s sudden boldness in her attempt to lash out at her mother. 

“I-uh-I don’t want to talk about this right now,” Betty mumbled, the anger fizzling out just as quickly as it had surfaced. “It’s my life. It was my decision. I said no. Can we all please move on with our lives and forget that last night ever happened?” 

“I deserve an explanation,” Alice told her.

“No, Mom, you don’t,” Betty said simply, shrugging her shoulders as if she wasn’t sure what else to say to her. “It’s about time you finally realized that.” 

Before her mother could say another word, Betty backed away from the street corner that had caused more trouble than it was worth, and headed down main street to the road that would lead her to the pavilion by the river. 

“Elizabeth,” her mother called after her, but Betty ignored it. She was tired of having to please everyone all the time. She was tired of having to be this perfect girl in this terribly imperfect body. To put it simply, she was just tired. “Elizabeth!” 

Just as she had wanted to earlier, Betty picked up her pace and began sprinting down the street. The wind whipping her hair behind her shoulders and her heart pounding wildly in her chest, she let her problems stay routed on the street corner where her mother was sure to be furiously dialing Polly to talk some sense into her senseless younger sister. But Betty didn’t care anymore. And she had to admit, that felt pretty damn good. 

\--

Jughead watched the leaves blow onto the crystal clear water, the early signs of autumn giving way to a golden hue that coated everything around him. His eyes were closed as he breathed in the crisp evening air that made his skin prickle with anticipation for whatever the rest of the night was going to bring him. A smile crept onto his lips as he heard a clumsy pair of footsteps tripping their way up the small set of stairs leading up to the pavilion and he turned slightly on the bench of the picnic table to meet them with a look of amusement. 

“I was starting to wonder if you’d forgotten about me,” he told Betty, leaning one elbow against the wooden surface behind him as he met her gaze with an uncertain smile. 

“I don’t think that’s physically possible at this point,” she muttered, her cheeks flushing a rosy pink as she took a few steps towards him, her feet kicking the leaves out of her path and making their way to the other side of the picnic table so that she could take a seat next to him on the bench. 

Betty kept her eyes forward, soaking in the steady flow of the river and refusing to meet Jughead’s eyes. 

“Did you finish it?” Jughead asked after a moment, not wanting to push her to give him back the journal, but curious enough to hear what she had to say about what she had read the night before. 

“I stayed up all night,” she nodded slowly, her hands moving up and down her knees nervously as she slowly turned her head to meet his eyes for the first time since she had stepped onto the pavilion. “If I had anymore doubts about me being the girl you’ve been writing about, they’re gone now, that’s for sure.”

Betty’s gaze lingered on Jughead’s for a moment before she pulled her legs up onto the bench so that her knees were now resting comfortably underneath her chin. 

“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Jughead wondered, his brows furrowing together slightly as he struggled to figure out what was causing her so much discomfort. 

“Chaos,” Betty whispered. “Kind of like the rest of my life.” 

“Beautiful chaos,” he corrected her, his voice so honest and sure of itself as his eyes bore into hers with an intensity that made Betty’s heart begin to pound in her chest. 

“I don’t know about that,” she blushed, pulling on the sleeves of her cardigan and wrapping it closely around the rest of her body as she tried her best to suppress a shiver. “I try so hard to make everyone in my life happy that when I do something they don’t like I-”

“You feel like you let them down somehow,” Jughead finished for her, and Betty turned back to him in surprise. “Like you’re responsible for their happiness and when you do something they weren’t expecting, you owe them an explanation for why you’ve caused them unhappiness.” 

Betty’s gaze drifted to the ground, taking in the tiny cracks in the concrete as she sucked in a harsh breath. “I mean this in the nicest way possible, Jughead, so don’t think I’m saying it to be rude or spiteful because I don’t want you to hate me but-”

“Betty, you can tell me anything,” Jughead assured her, and Betty closed her eyes as she tried to muster up the courage to say what she wanted to tell him. 

“I know that this whole thing is bizarre and confusing and just - kind of hard to believe. And I know that you’ve been writing about my life since you were sixteen,” Betty stuttered out quickly, hoping that she was making at least a shred of sense in her attempt to explain herself. “But you don’t actually know me. I mean, not really.”

“You’re right,” Jughead agreed, swinging his legs around so that he was facing away from the river and towards the parking lot. “So why don’t you let me.” 

“Are you sure you want to do that?” Betty asked uncertainly. “If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m kind of a mess.”

“Trust me, I’ve seen what a mess looks like,” Jughead told her, the smile that was evident on the corners of his lips only moments ago suddenly dropping to a frown. “You’re nowhere close.” 

“You mean your Dad?”

Betty winced at the words that had just escaped her lips. She wasn’t supposed to know about that. The knowledge that she had been writing about Jughead’s life when she was in high school had not been shared yet, and she wasn’t sure that she would have ever said anything to him at all if she hadn’t just slipped up. Now she had no choice. 

“How did you know that?”

“Oh - I - um. Just a lucky guess I guess,” Betty stuttered, standing from the picnic table quickly and shuffling her feet across the concrete to stand by the edge of the pavilion. 

“No, it’s something else,” Jughead pointed out slowly, pushing off the bench and moving to stand next to her. “Your eyebrows scrunch together when you’re lying.”

“Okay, it’s not fair that you know that yet.” 

“Betty,” Jughead lightly took her elbow in his hands and gently turned her body to face his. “Remember, you can tell me-”

“Anything,” Betty breathed. “I know.” 

“Come on,” Jughead pressed, his voice soft as he urged her to explain what she had been talking about. “Tell me.”

“Well it’s not like I have a whole journal to show you or anything, but - um - it turns out that you’re not the only one who had a stranger to write about growing up,” Betty swallowed hard. She had only ever told Polly about her essays and poems that she kept hidden in a portfolio in her room at her childhood home, and saying it out loud to the actual person she had been writing about unsuspectingly was a strange feeling. 

“Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”

“Because I still wasn’t sure if this was real,” Betty admitted, her eyes flitting up to meet his gaze. “To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure that you were real.” 

“What about now?” Jughead took a step closer to her on the pavilion so that there was no space between them, his hand reaching up to rest gently on her cheek. “Is this real?”

“I don’t know,” Betty breathed. “Why don’t you show me.”

Betty could feel the electricity radiating off his skin before their lips even met. She was pulled to him like it was written in her DNA for her hand to slide up his arm and rest comfortably on his cheek. For him to rest his hand on the crook of her hip. For both of them to breath in the other’s scent like they had been waiting their entire lives to be this close to another human being. And as Betty finally placed a soft kiss on his lips, her mind was filled with the most beautiful words ever written, words that she had never seen or heard until that moment. Words that were only meant to describe what she was feeling for this man that she didn’t know, but who she felt like she had known her entire life. 

“I thought you might be here.”

Betty and Jughead both pulled back from the kiss to find Archie Andrews standing at the top of the pavilion, his voice harsh as he ascended the steps and made his way closer to them. 

“Archie, what are you-” 

“Missing something?” Archie pulled the familiar leather-bound journal from his back pocket, tossing it onto the picnic table and glancing up to meet Betty’s gaze. 

“That’s my journal,” Jughead muttered, confusion written in his expression as he turned to Betty for an explanation. “What is he doing with it?”

“He must have taken it when I was sleeping on the bench last night,” Betty explained, her brows drawing together angrily as she stepped away from Jughead so that she could come face to face with the boy she had once loved so long ago. “I didn’t think you were the vengeful type, Archie.” 

“Yeah, well I guess there’s a lot we didn’t know about each other,” Archie shot back, his cheeks turning a deep red as the anger began to flare up within the pit of his stomach. “Kind of like you having an ongoing affair behind my back pretty much the entire time we were dating when you practically crucified me for what happened two years ago!”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Archie,” Betty pointed out, frustrated tears popping up in the corners of her eyes as she balled her hands into fists at her sides. “It’s not like that.” 

“Oh really? Then how the hell did he know all this stuff, Betty?” Archie picked up the journal again, flipping through it quickly before shoving it into her arms. “There’s personal stuff about you in here that I didn’t even know about until now. If he’s a stranger, why does he know enough to be able to write a whole goddamn book about it?” 

“I - it - it’s kind of hard to explain.”

“Then explain this,” Archie growled, his voice so low that Betty wasn’t entirely sure he had said anything at all. “Why were you kissing him just now if you don’t know him?” 

“Archie,” Betty squeaked out, reaching out to touch his arm, but coming up short when he backed away from edge of the pavilion. 

“Save it,” he snapped. “I don’t want anything to do with you. I’m getting out of this godforsaken town like I should have two years ago. That way I don’t have to run into either one of you ever again.”

Archie turned on his heel to head back to the parking lot, but stopped short to point a finger in Jughead’s direction. 

“As for you,” Archie hissed. “My agent called about the article. She seems to think you’re the best person to write about my comeback to the game. Well, I think you can guess where I’m going to tell you to shove that article now. Have a nice life together.” 

Betty watched in horror as her life imploded before her very eyes. The boy who had been a constant in her world for so long was no longer a part of it in any way. The boy she had some unexplainable connection with had lied to her about writing an article about the other boy. And to top it all off, _she_ had lied to _him_ about losing the journal. Nothing was working out the way it was supposed to and it was all her fault. 

“I was wrong,” Betty muttered under her breath. “It definitely could get a lot worse.”


End file.
